NEW BRUNSWICK -- Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital is experiencing a partial power outage and is diverting all new patients to other hospitals until the outage can be fixed, a spokesman said.

Peter Haigney, director of public relations for the hospital, said the partial power disruption is due to a system outage in the hospital's power plant.

He said the hospital's backup systems have been activated to provide power to the majority of the hospital's buildings, including all clinical and patient care areas.

Haigney said "exercising an abundance of caution," the hospital elected to go on "full divert status," to "alleviate additional stress on our back-up systems that could potentially be caused by additional patient volume."

"We have notified all appropriate government entities of our status," he said.

Haigney stressed, "patient safety remains our top priority."

"Our patients continue to receive the highest quality quality of care while we work to resolve this issue," he said.